Word: shelepin
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Tacked on to the end of a long-winded account in Pravda of the latest Central Committee meeting was a laconic one-line communique: "Comrade A.N. Shelepin has been relieved of his position as a Politburo member at his request." Thus did Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin, the Kremlin's star ascendant of the 1950s and '60s, plummet last week into the particular oblivion reserved for disgraced Soviet leaders. No one was fooled by the official contention that the most ambitious, the most artful and potentially the most powerful man in the U.S.S.R. had willingly relinquished his post...
Sovietologists agreed that the shake-up was highly significant-but of what? Some Western commentators jumped to the conclusion that it was a triumph for Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev's middle-of-the-road policies at home and detente abroad as against Shelepin's supposedly hard-lining Stalinism. Actually, Shelepin has consistently praised Brezhnev not only for his "vast personal contribution" to economic and political cooperation with the West but also for his handling of key domestic issues...
Fearful of possible rioting, T.U.C. officials whisked their controversial guest to Scotland. During a tour of Kilmarnock, Shelepin fleetingly made contact with a real, live British auto worker, producing a less-than-historic exchange. "Is your lunch hour long enough?" inquired the Russian through an interpreter. "It's all right," the worker replied...
...Shelepin hastily summoned reporters to Prestwick Airport as he prepared to leave. He claimed that the demonstrations against him "did not reflect the interests of the English working class and its unions." He blamed the protests on the Jews. Contending that the U.S.S.R. had fought World War II for the sake of Jews, he charged that they are now "ungrateful enemies of détente." In fact, most demonstrators were Protestant Britons or Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian refugees...
Although actively in pursuit of détente, Britain was discomfited by Shelepin's presence, even though he is widely regarded as a contender for Leonid Brezhnev's job when the Soviet party chief retires. As for the T.U.C., it defended the bungled visit in a statement claiming that the trip had led to "constructive conversations held in a friendly atmosphere...